Dachau:

Reality and Myth

John Cobden
 Dachau:
Reality and Myth

John Cobden

INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW

 Dachau: Reality and Myth in History Part One
by John Cobden

Published 1994 by ''Exter•nination Camp'' Dachau?:

Institute for Historical Review Conditions in the Catnp
P.O. Box 2739
Newport Beach, CA 92659
USA One of the most prominent camps featured in the early years of
the Holocaust extermination campaign was Dachau. Stories
IHR Stock # 0977. abounded about the many thousands who were extertttinated there
in gas chambers. Members of a US congressional investigating com-
Additional copies: mittee stood inside the alleged gas chamber where so many died,
Single copy: $5.00, plus$ 1.00 for shipping. and had their picture taken for the "folks" back home. The congres-
Two to five copies, $4.00 each, plus 50 cents each for shipping. sional commission noted that many prisoners in the camp "were
suffering from typhus or tuberculosis," and that the camp cremato-
Copyright (C) 1991 by John Cobden. ry was incapable of handling the large number of victims. However
All rights reserved. they also stated that this was "due to executions" presumably in the
previously mentioned gas chamber. The US Army released a photo
ISBN: 0-939484-49-8 of a disinfection chamber at the camp, and told the world that "Gas
Chambers, conveniently located to the crematory, are examined by
a soldier of the U.S. Seventh Army. These chambers were used by
Nazi guards for killing prisoners of the infamous Dachau concentra-
tion camp."~
John Cobden is the pen name of an American writer whose es- By the early 1960s the "official" Holocaust historians had admit-
says on political issues have appeared in nationally-circulated maga- ted that all such eyewitness testimony was wrong. No one was ever
zines and major daily newspapers, including the Hartford Courant "gassed" at Dachau.2 Still, the belief that Dachau was a center for
and the Orange County Register. His writings on aspects of the Holo- the gassing of concentration camp prisoners has persisted.
caust issue have appeared in The Journal of Historical Review and, Yet one can easily disprove these gassing claims by turning to the
in translation, in the French journal Revue d'Histoire Revisionniste. documents produced by supporters of the Holocaust exterttlination
story. Often the most important ''revisionist" works are not those re-
The first part of this booklet is adapted from a review article that produced by the revisionists but by those who accept the standard
first appeared in The Journal for Historical Review, Winter 1989 "exterminationist" view.
(Vol. 9, No. 4), pp. 485-504. A case in point is the 1988 book by Princeton University history
professor Arno Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The ~(Fi­
nal Solution" in History, which downplays Auschwitz as a center of
gassings and admits that most deaths in the German wartime
camps, including the so-called ''death camps," were the result of
f
''natural" causes, and not from gassings or executions.a
Another book that, remarkably, affirms the revisionist case is
Dachau: 1933-45, The Official History, by Paul Berben a star-
tling work in may ways. First published in 1968 in Belgium, it was
republished in 1975 by the "Comite International de Dachau," an
organization that "represents the tens of thousands of deportees
who were externtinated.in the death camp and also those who sur-

1
vived." (Berben, p. xiv). The edition consulted in preparing this
booklet states that it was "published for sale only at the Dachau
Camp Memorial Site." The preface of this official history of the
Dachau camp makes clear that it supports the standard "extermi-
nationist" view of the Holocaust: ''Many millions of people suffered
the horrors of the concentration camps; millions were exterminated
in them. Their crime had been to fight for freedom, for human
rights, for the respect due to each and every individual." Yet, the
book itself begins to question the very thesis announced in the pref-
ace.
It makes quite clear, for example, that many camp prisoners were
interned not because their "crime had been to fight for freedom, for
human rights, for the respect due to each and every individual," but
rather because they were common criminals. Berben's official histo-
ry also acknowledges (pp. 13-14) that criminals were by no means a
negligible portion of the camp population:
The third main category of prisoners, was the "criminals."
The S.S. distinguished between two groups in their statisti·
cal summaries: the P.S.V. and the B.V.; but both wore the
same badges. The P.S.V. CPolizeisicherungsverwli.hrte) were
criminals who had served their prison terms, in some case
many years since, but they were considered to be dangerous
and were held in the concentration camp as a preventive
measure (uorbeugend) ... The second group, the B.V. (Be-
fristete Vorbeugungshaft [temporary preventive detention);
often wrongly called Berufsverbrecher, profe88ional criminal),
was composed of men who were not released on the comple-
tion of their prison sentences but sent straight to the camp.
It seems very unlikely that many of the men in this group were
interned because they were fighters for human rights. On April 26,
1945 (three days before the camp's liberation), the number of crimi-
nals in Dachau was 759. (p. 221)
It also seems unlikely that many of the political prisoners, espe-
cially the Communists, were advocates of individual rights. In light
of the atrocities committed by Communists throughout Europe and
Asia between 1917 and 1945 (and later), it is certainly naive at
best, and a lie at worst, to paint these people as freedom fighters.
And yet most of the prisoners in the camp were political prisoners.
Again on April 26, 1945, a camp census shows that 43,401 of the
prisoners were there for political reasons. By contrast, the number
of Jews in the camp was 22,100, while 128 prisoners had been
purged from the Wehrmacht, 110 were incarcerated for homosexual
behavior, 85 were Jehovah's Witnesses, and 1,066 were classed as
"anti-socials." (p. 221)
2 3
And what of the "thousands of deportees who were exterminated
in the death camp" that the Dachau ComiW claims to represent.
You can't find them in Berben's official history. Instead the book out-
rightly admits that "the Dachau gas·chamber was never operated."
(p. 8) How then were these thousands "exterminated"? The meager
evidence offered here does not support the exterminationist view.
The total number of deaths in the main Dachau camp, and the
smaller satellite work centers, totaled 27,839 between the years
1940 and 1945 - a figure far short of the hundreds of thousands
originally claimed. (p. 281) Yet of this total, 2,226 of the prisoners
died after the American liberation of the camp. In other words,
eight percent of the deaths occurred during a single month, when
the camp was in Allied hands.
One could make a plausible case against the Allies on the basis of
this fact - if it is ripped out of context in the same manner that
charges against the Nazis are routinely ripped out of context. Ber-
ben's book provides the Dachau death rate for each month from
January 1940 until May 1945. During those 65 months, a total of
27,839 prisoners died - of all causes - or an average of 428 per
month. This means that during a single month of Allied control, the
death rate was 520 percent higher than average. One might counter
by pointing out that most of these deaths were caused by the spread
of typhus, which wrecked havoc on the camp in the final months.
Exactly!
The typhus epidemic that struck Dachau was devastating, and in
spite of all the efforts made by the camp's medical staff, it continued
to spread. The winter of 1944-45 was particularly deadly. From No-
vember 1944 until June 1945- and including the one month (May)
when the Allies controlled the camp - a total of 18,296 prisoners
died. This was 66 percent of the total number of deaths between
1940 and 1945, and most of these people died from disease. If one
adds to this the deaths during the winter of 1943-44, when another
mejor typhus outbreak hit the camp, the total number of victims
riees to 19,605, or 70 percent of the total number of deaths during
all the war years. (See Table 1}
If the figures in Berben's official history of Dachau are correct,
juat 8,234 of Dachau's remaining deaths could have perished as vic-
tims of "extermination." However, Berben makes quite clear that
disease was a constant problem, and that many prisoners died
throughout the year of such natural causes. He also points out that
numerous individuals committed suicide, that some prisoners be-
lieved to be working for the German camp guards were murdered
by fellow inmates, and that some were killed in Allied bombings. In
March 1942, Berben notes, a single Allied bombing attack against a
 Berben writes (pp. 94-95):
Table 1: Number of Priaonere Who Died at Dachau and in Outlying The death-rate in the camps forced the SS to take notice.
("Kommando") Satellite Camp., 1~1946 With the help of copious statistics they watched ite progreBB,
not to save human lives, but to economize on man-power. On
1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 September 30, 1943, [Oswald] Pohl [who headed the SS camp
January 455 142 205 53 2,888 agency] informed Hi.mmler that the number of deaths in Au·
February 17 gust was 40 out of an average work force of 17,300, that is
393 104 221 101 3,977
0.23 percent, whereas the previous months the percentage
March 86 321 66 139 362 3,668 had been 0.32 per cent. They had achieved a reduction of
April 101 227 79 112 144 2,625 0.09. Result& were obtained from other camps too. Out of a
May 87 322 98 83 84 2,226 total strength estimated at 224,000 in August, there had
June 54 219 84 55 78 been 4,699 deaths, that is 2.09 percent, compared with 2,23
July 34 140 173 51 107 percent in July: the improvement was therefore 0.14 percent.
August Hi.mmler congratulated Pohl on the result& he had obtained,
119 104 454 40 225
even though they were difficult to check!
September 134 73 319 45 326
October 171 88 207 57 403 What we find in this official history of Dachau is thus not a confir-
November 273 110 380 43 997 mation of the "exterminationist" Holocaust view, but rather a repu-
December 439 124 364 49 1,915 diation of it. One can quickly account for a very large percentage of
the total deaths. And while we don't know how many of the remain-
1btals 1,515 2,575 2,470 1,100 4,794 15,384 ing deaths were from "natural" causes, we can reasonably assume
that many were due to disease, accidents, suicides, and natural
This table is taken from Dachau: 1933-45, The Official Hi8tory, by Paul death. This latter category is also important because quite a few of
Berben, p. 281. Note that the Dacbau death rate fell slightly in 1942, and
that by 1943 it had fallen almoat 60 percent. In 1943 the death rate was at
Dachau's prisoners were elderly. "Statistics compiled by the camp
an all time low. According to the standard "exterminationist" story, though, administration office on February 16, 1945, list 2,309 men and 44
the German extermination program was in full swing at that time. In women aged between 50 and 60, and 545 men and 12 women over
1944, with the reappearance of typhus in the camp, deaths rose d.ramati· 60." (p. 11)
cally. Note that 66 percent of all deaths at Dachau took place during the fi. This admission is rather significant because, according to the "ex-
nal seven months. It should alao be noted that during the winter months of terminationist" view, elderly prisoners were never admitted into
1942-43 another typhus outbreak alao struck the camp. There is also an the camps as inmates, but were separated from the others immedi-
unusually high number of deaths in March 1944: Allied bombings of satel· ately upon arrival and then gassed to death. And yet, in mid-Febru-
lite "Kommando" camps resulted in the deaths of 223 prisoners. (See P. ary 1945- when one might assume that the Nazi effort to
Berben, Dachau, p. 95.) exterminate Jews and others was near its pinnacle - at this sup-
posed "death camp," we find 2,910 elderly prisoners who, for no ap-
parent reason, missed the gas chamber.
factory where prisoners worked killed 223 inmates. In another case According to the long-standing "official" view of Dachau, the eld-
a tunnel collapsed in a factory, killing 22 prisoners, and an Allied erly and children were immediately singled out for death because
bombing at the same site later killed another six. These incidents they were incapable of productive work. Yet it is now admitted that,
alone account for 251 deaths in the camp, nearly one percent of the in addition to nearly 3,000 elderly, the camp also housed an unstat-
death total. Some prisoners were also executed, contends Berben, ed number of children. Berben states (p. 175) that a group of prison-
mostly by firing squad. But these executions account for only a very ers formed an unofficial governing body called the "International
small percentage of the deaths in the camp - about .0087 percent. Committee," and that this group started a school for the children in
(p. 271)
the camp:
SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, Berben also notes, actually
sought to lower the death rate in the camps as much as possible, As has already been mentioned, there were times when even
which seems odd if the extermination of prisoners was the goal. children were imprisoned in Dachau. The International

6
4
 Committee aaw to it that they were not abandoned. A ecbool By ei&ht o'clock nat IDOrDini I wu at the ptee of the Con·
waa organized for Rueaian children under a Yugoelav te.ch- centration Camp at Daehau which the Bavarian Police Ser-
er, and the older onee were placed in Kommandoe [eubeidiary vice, had, without any application on my part, invited me to
work campa of Dachau] where they were looked after by pria- viait. I carried no apedalletter, ODly an ordinary pue, and I
onens who tried not only to keep them in good health but to wu shown round by an officer who clearly wu imperfectly
teach them the rudimente of a trade u well. informed u to my identity. There were, he told me, eome
1,600 men in the camp, u compared with 2,600 aix montha
While the older children were able to work. it is unlikely that this ago. Of 26,000 men interned throughout Germany in 1933,
was true of the younger children in the camp. According to the "ex- only 10,000 were now left He had only a IICOJ'8 ol J~ in,the
terminationist" view, these unemployable children should have camp, ~ueh Ieee than the right and natural proportion he
been immediately transferred to an "extermination" camp. observed. It wu an old munitiona factory, but for the barbed
When evaluating the "exterminationist" and the "revieionist" wire and the aentriee in the black uniform of the SS it looked
views, it is important to take note of day-to-day living conditions like an Arl>eit.dunatla6er ["labor aerviee camp"]. The men
and treatment of prisoners in the camps. Under a regime intent on were in tighter quartera: three beds one above the other, u
in the cabina ol HM'a [Britiah naval) tranaporta when I fi.rat
the death of all Jews and other "undesirablee," we would expect
went Eut. The kitehena, the food in preparation, the type of
very little food, medical care, and so forth to be available to the pris-
oners. There would be no orders to lower the death rate, there
would be no elderly or sick prisoners eitting around. All thoee capa-
ble of working would work, and all others would be put to death -
the sooner the better. But as even the official history of Dachau
camp affirms, the Germane were intent on keeping prisoners alive,
even the sick and the elderly.
Dachau was opened March 23, 1933, as one of the ftret camps es-
tablished as part of the Nazi concentration system. What Berben
reveals about the actual living conditione in the camp refutes the
"exterminationist" view of the camp. He writes (p. 4), for example:
The cleanlineea of the cook-houae cauaed viaitora from the
Nazi Party, from Junker echoole [trai.niq .choola for futun
high-ranking officera] and the Army to remark that the treat-
ment given to men claeaified u the 'drep of humanity' wu
much too good.
Visitors to Dachau, Berben then tells us, could view a museum
that was designed to explain the Nazi German concentration camp
system. SS personnel also took outeide visitore on tours of the
camp, Berben goes on to note. We must wonder how bad day-to-day
conditions really were if outside vieitore were regularly given toun
of the camp. (While Berben'e history doesn't tell us how long thie
state of affairs continued, we can aaeume that after the outbreak of
war in 1939, at the latest, euch toura were diecontinued.) Dachau prlaonen on the day of liberation. Few ob.erven com-
One outside visitor who provided a contemporary account of con- pare the condition of thMe prieonen with thoee who died. PilM
ditions in Dachau was an Englishman, Arnold Wilaon. He visited of dead bodiM found at Dachau and the other camp• aenerally
were made up of emaciated lndlvidual&. Emaciation wu ~p­
the camp shortly after it wae establiehed. Hie account appears in tomatic of many of the cn.e... found in the campe. U teatlmony
his book, Walks and 'lblks Abroad, which wae published by Oxford of ,.. chamben ia correct the body pllea mould include prlaon-
University Press in 1939. Wilson wrote:• en u healthy looking u theee.

7
6
 work being done iD the worbhope, with DO lack of machin-
ery, were all normal to German eyee. There wu a C&Dteen,
where luzuriee could be bought ...
There wu the aame dUcipline u iD the volunteers' camp;
the aame routine. A weekly newspaper wu circulated. u iD
the Tegel jail. The men looked neither better or woree fed
than in the free camp• or the jail, and neither better nor
woree clad, except for a puniabment equad of a dozen men,
clean-abaven in a apeeial dreea who, on banda and kneee,
were weeding a gravel plot. They looked white and harried. I
saw the men parac:ling for inspection by the doctor and den-
tist at work. There were some twenty or thirty waiting, a
larger number than one would expect to find in a free camp
but of couree tbie camp wa.a men of all ages. moetly over thir-
ty. I saw acareely any young men. They ue not regarded aa
irreclaimable and were soon sent back to civil life.
Another Englishman, Christopher Sidgwick, visited Dachau two
years later, and likewise made public his account. In German Jour-
ney, published by Hutchinson & Co. (London, 1936), Sidgwick
wrote:6
... The inside of the camp looked exactly like the ioaide of the
better [German] Labour Corps camps I had inspected near
Bremen. The men's quarters were the same army buts. They
were properly heated, ventilated, and lighted. They did not
smell more musty than thoee of the Labour Corps. There wu
a apace, a little street, between each row of huts, and the
streets were twice the width of a hut. As we came upon theee
buts we found the streets filled with convicts, some atanc:ling
about amoking, aome cleaning boots, others waiting to be
marched off to whatever work there wa.a to be bad. As we
passed they pulled off their knitted wool caps and braced
tbemselvea to attention.
There wa.a no saluting, no heilingofHitler. X told me that
there were five categories of convict. Political priaonere,
mostly Communists; Jews; the eo-called "Traitors of the
Common People"; hardened criminals of the burglaring and
pocket-picking type; and homosexuals.
With regard to living conditions at Dachau, one of the most amaz-
ing features was a brothel that was established there for the use of
the prisoners. "During the summer of 1943 [at a time when exter-
mination& are alleged to have been going full scale], Himmler or-
dered the setting-up of brothels in concentration camps called
Sonderbau (special building). His aim was to solve the sexual prob-
lem, combat homosexual practices, and increase the workers' out-
put ... In mid-December 1944 there were thirteen of these women
8
in Daehau..- (Berben, p. 7) Somehow the vieion of a brothel for pris-
oners doesn't fit in with a policy·of exterminating all prisoners.
Similarly remarkable ie the fact, confirmed by Berben, that some
prisoners could leave the camp by joining the German military. (p.
17). He writes:
During the war inclliriduala were rarely releaaed, and then
only German nationala. However, prieonen were aborted to
join the Webrmacht and SS unite, and conditiooa for enliat-
ing became leu and Ieee demanc:ling, iD order to fill the gape.
At first the 'politicala' were not permitted the 'honour of bear-
ing anna,' but tbia ban wulifted iD 1944. Alread,y in 1948,
criminals bad been able to 'redeem themaelvee' by joining the
notorious Dirlewanger Brigade, but in 1944 Dirlewanger
suggested to Himmler that 'politicala' should be recruited
from the camps, and his proposal wa.a accepted; 194 prisoner
volunteers were released from Dacbau at the beginning of
November 19« to join the Brigade.
It is also not widely known that prisoners could purchase food
from a camp canteen. In the belief that money in the hands of pris-
oners would make it easier for them to escape, in 1942 a system of
"gift; coupons" was instituted, and the possession of money was for-
bidden. Their money would be deposited in accounts for the prison-
ers, who could then obtain coupons. Berben writes (pp. 60, 69):
The money iD their aecount bad to be ueed for the purehaae
of articles obtainable at the canteen ... Beetroot jam, oat-
meal. sauerkraut, dried vegetables, tinned muaeele and fish,
cucumbers, condiments, etc. were on sale ... The canteen also
stocked articles such as needles and thread, and particularly
lotions, creams and perfume: the close-cropped prisoner w88
invited to buy something to put on hie hair!
Berben criticizes SS camp personnel because they "made consid-
erable profits" from the canteen. But even if prices were extremely
high, such "considerable profits" would not have been possible with-
out considerable sales.
Dachau was fairly well stocked with items during the early years
of the war, but supplies dwindled as the war dragged on. "A large
selection of goods could be bought before the war, but the canteen
gradually lost its importance, and little by little reached a state
when it could offer nothing." (p. 69)
How goods disappeared from the shelves of the canteen may seem
irrelevant, but it is actually quite important. If the National Social-
ist regime had decided to exterminate its prisoners, it reasonably
might simply close down the canteen and confiscate the money the
9
prisoners held in their accounts. Instead the canteen "IJ'adually loet
ita importance" aa aooda disappeared frotn the lhelvu "little by li~
tie." As it happened, goods disappeared "little by little" from all the
shelves in all of Germany's stores as the war drq:ged on. The srad·
ual loss of goods experienced by Dachau'e prisoners waa like that
being experienced by all Germans during the war years.
• What happened in the camp canteen reflected the larger wartime
reality ofDachau. Conditions didn't suddenly become horrible.nur..
ing most of the camp's existence conditions remained rather tolera-
ble, considering that it served as a kind of prison. Berben quotee (p.
43) Wolfgang Jasper, a legation couneelor and a member since 1935
of an SS cavalry unit:
We found the camp [in 1931] and the huta in faultleu condi-
tion and perfectly clean. The priaonera made a very good im-
pression on ue and did not seem to be at all hunll')'. They
'\ll,ere allowed to receive lettera and parc:ela,,and had a can-
teen where they could buy things. There were aleo cultural
activities available.
In 1940 conditions in the camp began to decline. The new com-
mandant, Alex Piorkowski, "rarely entered the prisoners' camp. He
was not active, and left most things in the hand of hie subordinates.
T?ey w~re given. a free r~ign and could treat prisoners as they
Wlshed. (p. 48) P1orkowski was removed fror.n this position on Sep-
tember 1, 1942, and later expelled from the Nazi party. He was re- Jewish babies at Dachau. These Hungarian Jewish women and
their babies were photographed on May 1, 1945, two daywt after
placed by Martin WeiBB, former Commandant of the Neuengamme the liberation of the camp. The official US Army caption reports
concentration camp. Berben notes (p. 49): that these Jewlah bablea were born during the final months of
Some people emphuize that he [Weiu] introduced a number German control of the camp. (US Army photo SC 206488.)
of humane changes in camp administration, and that be took
a pereonal interest in seeing that his ordera were carried out. is highly unlikely that a "great number of witnesses" would have
He forbade Kapoe [prisoner adminietratora) and Senion to defended Weiss if he had been a monster, and if conditions had been
etrike other priaonen arbitrarily; he peraonal)y inapected r . really terrible. It is also interesting to note that after moving to Lu-
porta of punishment.; he decided the level of theee unetiou, blin WeiBB took the position of Inspector of Camps.
and wu present when they were administered eo u to pre- Conditions in Dachau remained fairly decent under Weiter's com-
vent abusee. According to 'privilepd' prieonera [clergy, hiP· mand. In a number of the German wartime camps, though, prison-
ranking individuale, and such], be often abowed conaider- ers did suffer under the rule of unscrupulous officers. Consequently,
ation and obtained a good deal of relief for them. the Nazi 'g overnment convened a special commission to investigate
On November 1, 1943, WeiBSleft Dachau to aBSume command of camp conditions and the behavior of camp commandants and offic-
the Lublin camp. He was replaced by Wilhelm Weiter, who, Berben ers.
reports (p. 50), maintained conditione as they had been: "Few Official investigations of conditions at Dachau were conducted
changes were made in the camp due to any personal action of his." there between May and July of 1944. The Judge who investigated
After the war, WeiBB was put on trial by the Allies. Berben writes: the camp, Berben notes, "thoroughly examined all the internal ar-
''In spite of the great number of witnesses who spoke for him during rangements. The hospital was in perfect order. He had visited all
the Dachau trial, WeiBB was condemned to death and executed." It the buildings. There was no significant overcrowding, and what was
specially noteworthy was the astonishingly high number of medical

10
11

instruments for the treatment of prisoners." (p. 44)
It seems absurd to claim that the National Socialist regime was
extertninating Jews on the one hand while at the same time desper-
ately trying to save the lives of these same people. According to the
current "extertninationist" view, the Nazis were using some prison-
ers as slave labor while simultaneously killing others. However,
considering the numbers of people available for forced labor, it
seems unnecessary to have expended any medical resources. If
mass extermination, along with forced labor, had been the goal,
then logically sick prisoners would simply have been left to die. Yet
Berben spends quite a bit of time telling us how the National So-
cialist government continually expanded medical services through-
out the war.
When the Dachau camp was first established in 1933, Berben re-
lates, very little medical services were available to prisoners. Later,
as the camp was expanded, a hospital was included in "Blocks A
and B: they consisted of an operating theatre with modem equip-
ment. Visitors were invariably shown these buildings, because they
'proved' the interest taken by the SS in the prisoners' health." (p.
104) As the war continued, the demand for health services in the
camp increased. In 1940, Berben explained (p. 104), the hospital
was
extended to Blocks 1, 3 and 5. But it was mainly from 1942
onwards that increasing numbers caused the sick block to be
extended: in September of that year it comprised seven
blocks, one of which had no wards and was reserve for offices,
the pharmacy, the laboratory, and the rooms occupied by the
experimental departments. In the second half of 1944, the
seven blocks were linked by a long closed corridor, and then
the three next blocks, 11 to 15, were added ...
The hospital care given to prisoners is praised repeatedly in Ber-
ben's official history (p. 104):
The accommodation was complete and modem, and in nor-
mal conditions specialists could have treated all the diseasee
efficiently. Operations were performed in two well-equipped
theatres. The laboratory waa well appointed, and all the nec-
essary analyses could be made there until, at the end of
1944, the service wu overwhelmed. There was an electrocar-
diograph and the very latest model of a Siemens X-ray appa-
ratus.
Berben notes (p. 106) that the prisoners benefited from the in-
crease in hospital services:
The effect of these changes on the prisoners' situation was
12
beneficial. Generally speaking, there was good understand-
ing between the doctors and prisoner-nurses, and their coop-
eration achieved good results. Thanks to the doctors'
initiative, backed up by the nurses and with the help of
workmen, a special hut was built between Blocks 11 and 13
for the tuberculosis patients to take open-air cures. Sputum
was examined in the laboratory, and most of those prisoners
in whom it was found to give a positive reaction were hospi-
talized and treated by rest and fresh-air cures, and given ex-
tra rations.
As Berben's history makes clear, Dachau camp officials attempted
to keep disease to a minimum. They tried to enforce certain hygiene
standards, which of course, became increasingly more difficult as
the war continued. As Berben notes (p. 109):
It is obvious that in a camp where thousands of men lived in
a far too confined area and in deplorable conditions very
strict hygiene was vital. In the early years, when numbers
were still relatively low and arrivals were in small groups,
adequate precautions could be taken. urrbe newcomers went
to the showers, were cropped, given clothes and underwear,
wretched, it is true, but laundered." The rooms were not
overcrowded, the orders concerning the upkeep of the pre-
mises, clothing and bodily cleanliness were irksome and
prompted the bullying of prisoners, but all in all they were
useful because the vast majority of the prisoners realized
that if they were to stand any chance of survival they would
have to confirm to strict rules. They knew that they could of
course expect nothing from the camp authorities; when hy-
gienic precautions were laid down, it was merely to protect
the SS staff and to have the maximum labour force.
Even a cursory reading of Berben's Dachau, 1933-1945 shows
that conditions in the camp remained fairly decent until near the
end of the war, when all of Gertnany was in havoc.
The prisoners' food situation deserves mention. While Berben
writes much about a lack of food, the information he provides in his
own book contradicts such complaints. As we have already ,a
canteen was available where prisoners could buy food. And we
know that food was served at regular meal functions, even though
Berben continually complains that it was inadequate. However,
other sources of food were available, and they seem to be rather nu-
merous. During the war, notes Berben, camp officials actually in-
creased the number of meals for some groups of workers. ''When
manpower needs became pressing during the war, supplementary
food was sanctioned to increase output. Certain categories of work-
13
ers were given a much-appreciated 'second breakfaat: called
Brotzeit, consisting of an eighth or tenth part of a loaf and two ounc-
es of sausage." (p. 69)
In addition to regularly scheduled meals and the aecond break-
fast, as well as what prisoners could purchase at the canteen, fami-
ly and friends of prisoners could send food parcela to inmates.
"From the end of 1942, however, large consignment& of food and
other useful things did reach the camp ..."
In addition to these parcels, wrhe consignment& sent by the Red
Cross also brought assistance whose beneficial effort cannot be
over-emphasized." Red Croee shipments alone, writea Berben, con-
sisted of "thousands" of parcels. Dachau served at the main camp
for all of the approximately 2, 700 prisoners who were elerl)'. Ac-
cording to Berben (p. 151),
food pareela could be sent to clergy. and the food aituation im-
proved noticeably. Gennana and Polee particularly received
them in considerable quantitiee from their famillee, their pa-
rishioners and members of religious communitiee. In Block
26 one hundred eometi.mee arrived on the aame day.
These "considerable quantities" of food continued to arrive until
very near the end of the war, as Berben explains:
This period of relative plenty lasted till the end of 19« wheD
the disruption of communications atopped the diapatch of
parcels. Nevertheleea the German clergy continued to receive
food through the Dean of Dachau, Herr Pfannlt, to whom
the correspondent• aent food tickets: the prieata boupt
bread and sausage with these and Bent the parcela by the Jo..
eal poet.
So Berben, while lamenting the lack of food, tells us that prison-
ers had regular meals, some had a second breakfast, that "large
consignments" of food were mailed to prisoners, that "thouaanda" of
food parcels arrived from the Red Cross, that food could be pur-
chased at the canteen, that the eleri)' received "conaiderable quan-
tities" from parishioners, and that this "period of relative plenty
lasted till the end of 1944." All of this came to an end, Berben af-
firms, not because the Nazis decided to starve prisoners, but be-
cause "the disruption of communication stopped the dispatch of
parcels." Yet, in spite of these admissions, Berben contends that "le-
gitimate means of obtaining extras were available to only a limited
number of privileged prisoners." (pp. 164-165)
In addition to the foregoing admissions, this official historian also
acknowledges that Dachau's prisoners were given Sundays off for
leisure and culture. On Sunday afternoons, Berben tell us, the pris-
oners were permitted to engage in competitive games. Although
this was stopped in 1938, in 1941 "this permission was granted
aaain and there were cultural activities as well. On Sundays a cer-
- - amount
tain ' of freedom was allowed for amusement&."He exp1. ams:
Theatrical entertainments, concerts, revuea and lectures
were arranged too. Among the thousands of men who lived in
the camp there were all eorte of talent., great and IIID&ll, to
be found: famoua musicians, good amateur muaiciana, the-
atre and music-hall artiata. Many of these men devoted their
time in the moet admirable way to gain a few moment. of •-
cape for their co,mradee in misery, and to keep up their mo-
rale. And these activities helped too to create a feeling of
fellowship. During the lut months there were alao a few 6Jm
ehowa, about once a fortnight.
In addition, "the camp had a library which started in a modest
way but which eventually stocked some fifteen thousand volumes ...
There was a very varied choice, from popular novels to the great
classics, and scientific and philosophical works." (p. 72) Berben also
notes that "some men in spite of their miserable convict's existence
nevertheless found the energy to take an interest in the arts, in sci-
ence and in philosophical problems." (p. 73) Moreover, "a prisoner
could subscribe to newspapers and various publications ... " (p. 75)
Newspaper subscriptions were allowed right up until the very end
of the war. (p. 180)
• As already mentioned, Dachau served as a central camp for incar-
cerated clergy. By policy, almost all members of the clergy who had
been detained - 2,720 in all - were transferred to Dachau. The
treatment of these prisoners warrants some special attention. Ber-
ben relates (p. 147):
On March 115, 1941, the clergy were withdrawn from work
Kommandoe on orders from Berlin. and their conditione im-
proved. They were supplied with bedding of the kind iasued
to the SS, and Russian and Polish prisoners were assigned to
look after their quarters. They could get up an hour later
than the other prieoners and reet on their beds for two hours
in the morning and afternoon. Free from work. they could
give themselvea to study and to meditation. They were given
newepapen and allowed to use the library. Their food wu
adequate; they eometi.mee received up to a third of a loaf of
bread a day; there wu even a period when they were given
half a litre of cocoa in the morning and a third of a bottle of
wine daily.
115
 While clergy prisoners were not obliged to work, beginning in
1943 some volunteered to work as nurses in the hospital. Because
typhus was ravaging the camp at that time, this proved fatal to
some. "Several of them fell victim to their devotion, as this was a
time when typhus was raging in the camp," Berben notes. (p. 151)
With support and encouragement from camp officials, clergy pris-
oners built a chapel for religious services. (Prior to this, services
were held throughout the camp in the barracks huts.) "fhe patient
work by clergy and lay people alike had, in the end, achieved a mir-
acle. The chapel was 20 metres long by 9 wide and could hold about
800 people, but often more than a thousand crowded in." (p. 153)
Services were held all day long on Sundays, with one service imme-
diately following another. (p. 154)
During the final, chaotic period, the chapel's purpose became
somewhat controversial. As prisoners from camps near the front
were evacuated into the interior, Dachau became increasingly over-
crowded. At the same time, typhus took a terrible incredible toll as
health care broke down. In an effort to combat the disease, camp of-
ficials sought to relieve the overcrowding, and accordingly asked
the clergy for permission to convert the chapel into make-shift
housing." ... The suggestion was put to the clergy that they should
give it [the chapel] up in order to combat the shortage of accommo-
dation, which was becoming disastrous." (p. 154) However, the cler-
gy were adamant: they refused to surrender the chapel, even to
save lives. They argued that of all the buildings in the camp were
being used to house prisoners, and suggested that instead of the
large chapel the small cobbler's shop and the brothel be converted
into housing. They also argued that the chapel would only house
250 "which was nothing compared with the continuous intake of
prisoners." The clergy had the final word: camp officials gave in to
their wishes "and the chapel was retained to the last." (p. 154)
• While Berben's description of the day-to-day treatment of Dachau
prisoners does not seem to fit a pattern of extermination, charges of
medical experiments do raise legitimate concern. According to Ber-
ben Dachau was a center for medical experiments to study the ef-
fects of malaria, high altitudes and freezing. If such experiments
were conducted in the camp they should rightfully be condemned in
the strongest of terms. However, much of what Berben writes in
this regard is based on the testimony of a single person, Waiter
NetT, a prisoner who had worked as an assistant to Dr. Sigmund Ra-
scher, a camp physician. According to NetT, medical experiments
were conducted on 180 to 200 prisoners. Ten of these were volun-
teers, said NetT, and all the others, with the exception of about 40,
were prisoners who had been condemned to death. During the
course of the medical experiments, NetT said, 70 to 80 prisoners
16
died. We are not told if these 70 to 80 prisoners were among those
already "concfemned to death."
NetT worked with Dr. Rascher from the beginning of 1941, and
was released as a prisoner on condition that he continue working
with the physician. NetT regularly reported for duty at the camp in
uniform, Berben notes, and he even carried a pistol. NetT claimed
that he worked in the interest of the prisoners, and tried to sabo-
tage the work of Rascher. He further claimed to have helped in a
"revolt" in the town of Dachau a few days before the Americans ar-
rived. As Berben notes, NetT's "role in his dealings with Rascher
never seems to be very clear, nor the part he played in choosing the
subjects for experiments." (p. 127)
As already indicated, NetT is the source for much of the "evidence"
of medical experiments at Dachau. Berben goes on to write (p. 133):
The most terrible experiment at which Neffwas present was
one carried out on two Russian officers. They were taken
from the bunker and plunged naked into a tank [of freezing
water] at about 4 p.m., and they held out for almost five
hours. Raacher had leveled hie revolver at Neff and a young
Polish aide who tried 'to give the two wretches chloroform.
Dr. Romberg considered the whole episode ae described by
Neff during the trial to be improbable; in hia view, the sub-
ject of such experiments ie stiff and incapable of making a
movement or uttering a word after 10 or 20 minutes, where-
as, according to Neff, the two officers were still talking to one
another during the third hour and bade each other farewell.
NetT later charged that Dr. Rascher's wife "could not have chil-
dren and for this reason Himmler had forbidden Rascher to marry
her, but he authorized the marriage when she had her second
child." According to Berben, NetT claimed (p. 134) that
The four Raseher children were said to have been stolen.
When, after a short time, she did not like a baby any longer,
she put another in ite place, and in this way ia said to have
had nine different children in her house! It must be noted
however that Raacher's uncle stated that in hie view the
charge of illegal adoption was false, for he had seen Frau Ra-
echer when she was pregnant for the second time, and the
first child certainly bore RaBCher's features.
But NetT never had the opportunity to face the man he charged
with these crimes. Rascher was arrested by the German police be-
fore the end of the war and himself imprisoned at Dachau. Berben
and NetT report that Rascher was executed in the camp by the Na-
zis. (They also mention that Rascher was shot to death and not
gassed.)
17
 Berben notes two other 10urces for the accueationa of medical ex- evacuation began of camps situated in areas threatened by
periments: the victorious advance of the Allies, the horror surpassed
anything that bad been seen till then.
With the exception of Dr. Gebhardt, who knew about theN
aperimenta and elaim.l that he proteeted in vain to Hfmmler The overcrowding could be quite dramatic. In the blocks selected
about them, all the docton who took part in them ,..... dead in Berben's book as a point of illustration, the population rose by 49
or had diaappeared at the time of the Doctor'• Trial. The ooly percent in five months (See Table 2); and this was during the height
information about the number of priaonen uaed and the of the typhus epidemic when the number of deaths average 2,614
number of vietima wu provided by a nune, Heinrich Stohr, a per month.
political priaoner .. . '
Even if medical experiments were performed, this does not dis-
Table 1: lncreaeee in Numben of Priaoners in Certain Dacbau Bar-
credit the revisionist case. Such experiments were quite limited in racka Blocb Between November 28, 1944, and April 28, 1946
scope and included a very small fraction of the priaonera. Moat of
the prisoners chosen had already been sentenced to death. Block Nov. 28, 1944 April 26, 1945
If Dachau's prisoners, in general, were not purposefully mur- 2 664 939
dered by the Nazis, how did they die? The answer to thia ie relative- 4 733 842
ly easy to find, and Berben is quite helpful. To understand the 6 901 1,403
reasons for inmate deaths, we must understand the general condi- 1,356
8 854
tions prevailing in all of Europe during the period.
10 889 1,117
As the German economy, infrastructure and administration col-
lapsed during the final months of the war, badly needed supplies be- 12 855 1,140
came unavailable. As Berben repeatedly notes, food supplies and 14 682 990
parcels almost disappeared during the final montha of the war. He 16 869 1,137
points out, for example, that medical service was "complete and 18 861 1,138
modern, and in normal conditions specialists could have treated all 20 889 1,152
the disease efficiently" but "at the end of 1944, the service wu over- 22 783 1,446
whelmed., Bunk space was sufficient until the last few months of 24 968 1,306
the war, and then the barracks huts became increasingly over- 26 524 1,090
crowded. The key factor in the high death rate of Dachau pri10ners 28 707 1,547
were the conditione of war during the final period of that great con-
ftict.
As the war came to an end, and the Allies closed in on the center Berben notes (p. 8) how disease spread throughout the camp:
of Germany, enormous numbers of prisoners were evacuated from Finally exanthematous typhus came to thia block [Block SO,
the camps near the front and moved to the interior. Becau1e of its which housed invalids and some elderly] as well; it bad thus
central location, Dachau became a key destination camp for these jumped acroee the Lagerstraeee and traveled through the un-
transfers. Thus, at the same time that food and medical auppliee be- evenly numbered bloclu to the west wing. In short, writes
came more difficult to obtain, the demand increas8d u prisoners Msgr. Neuhil.ueler, '"what happened from the end of Decem-
were brought in from other camps. Berben explains (pp. 101, 100): ber 1944 and in January and February 1946 in the Dacbau
concentration camp constitutes one of the moat frightful
From the start of the evacuation tens of thoueanda or prt.on- tragedies in the history of all concentration camps."
en anived at Dachau in a state of terrible exhauation, and a
vast number died before the liberation and in the weeb that Typhus wasn't the only disease camp officials had to cope with,
followed. Theae maaaive arrivala caused unparalleled diJJl. Berben reports (p. 102):
eultiee and a large number of deatha among the camp popu-
Digestive ailments were very widespread, especially diar-
lation, particularly u a typhua epidemic spread .. . When the
rbea and persistent enteritis which could only have been

18 19
 cured by an appropriate diet. Most of the prisoners suffered
from oedema, which lead to frequent abrasions around the
feet; when infected, these caused painful phlegmons. There
were all kind of pulmonary infections, including pneumonia,
and infectious diseases, of which erysipelas, very contagious,
was the commonest. There were also cases of diphtheria and
scarlet fever. All these illnesses accentuated the patient's
general debility where there was no adequate treatment or
diet, and fatal complications often set.
Rampant disease killed thousands, "in spite of all efforts," Berben
goes on to relate. {p. 107) (If extermination was the intention, why
make such efforts, especially during the final months of the war?)
Following the camp's liberation on April 29, 1945, even the best
efforts of the Americans were unable to stop the disease. As already
pointed out, 2,226 prisoners died in May 1945. Berben writes (p.
197):
However eager they might be to return to their families, the
thousands of liberated prisoners had to be realistic: many
days would go by before repatriation could begin. The typhus
epidemic which has for months reaped a daily toll of lives
had to be checked, so that it should not spread to the civilian
and military population. Inevitably, the camp had to be put
into quarantine until further notice.
The Americans were hampered in their efforts for the same rea-
sons the Germans had been incapable of ending the disease: "for
want of hospitals and medicines." (p. 198) Even after the quaran-
tine was lifted on May 12th, disease continued to claims lives. Be-
tween June 1 and June 16, notes this official history, an additional
200 died in the camp. Moreover, as Berben relates, food "continued
to give grounds for serious concern," in spite of liberation.
Dachau inmate deaths totaled 27,839, Berben reports, while the
total inmate population during the years 1940-1945 was 168,433.
Thus, the death rate at the infamous Dachau "death camp" during
the year~ of history's most devastating war was 16.5 percent. As
high as this figure admittedly is, it should, however, be kept in per-
spective. For one thing, it is probably much lower than what the
public might generally assume. Also, it is actually quite low when
compared to some other wartime situations. For instance, the death
rate in the northern German city of Hamburg during one night of
the Allied bombing was more than double the death rate at Dachau
over 65 months. British historian Paul Johnson, points out in his
massive work, Modern Times (p. 403): "... In one night alone fatal
casualties in the four firestorm districts [of Hamburg] were 40,000,
or up to 37.65 percent of the total population." The infamous fire
20
bombings of civilians in Dresden resulted in an even higher per-
centage of casualties. David lrving, another British historian,
writes in The Destruction of Dresden (p. 227):
If a death-role of this scale [361.6 per thousand] could have
been possible in a city like Hamburg, where the most elabo-
rate air-raid precautions had been taken, it seems not unrea-
sonable to assume at least the same proportion and very
probably a higher proportion of fatalities during the triple
blow on Dresden ...
A Dachau prisoner was twice as likely to survive than was a Ger-
man civilian in Hamburg or Dresden.
Death rates in various European armed forced during the Second
World War were also very high. The German military, for instance,
lost 34.3 percent of its members. Poland lost 32 percent, the Soviet
Union lost 60 percent, Yugoslavia lost 82 percent, Finland lost 32.8
percent, Hungary lost 40 percent, and Romania lost 5o percent.
Since most Dachau prisoners were non-Jews, we can assume that
many of them, if they hadn't been incarcerated, would have been
pressed into German military service where their odds of dying
were twice as high. It is certainly one of the strange facts of the war
that those Dachau prisoners who volunteered to join the German
army to escape the camp actually doubled their odds of dying.
Most people are unaware of the terrible losses suffered by Ger-
man civilians during the war and in the period immediately follow-
ing. (This includes "ethnic Germans" or Volksdeutsche.) An
estimated 16,500,000 German civilians fled or were forcibly ex-
pelled by the Allies from Central and Eastern Europe, of whom an
estimated 2,111,000 were killed or perished. Prior to the expulsion
this group suffered war-time casualties totaling 1,100,000. Out of a
total of 16,999,000 of these Germans, an estimated 3,211,000 (or
18.89 percent) lost their lives as a consequence of the war or the
flight and expulsion.6
Berben's account provides other interesting facts or comments
that raise doubts about the generally accepted "exterminationist"
view. For example, he cites the "confession" of Dr. Muthig, Chief
Camp Physician at Dachau (p. 275). Like so many others, Dr. Muth-
ig declared, after his "interrogation," that Dachau "prisoners unfit
to work [were] subjected to euthanasia and transferred to Mau-
thausen concentration camp to be gassed."
There are two problems with this "confession." First, as Berben
himself so aptly acknowledges, Dachau prisoners who were not fit
to work were medically treated, given extra rations, offered "open-
air cures," and so forth. Secondly, Holocaust historians now ac-
21
knowledge that Mauthausen was not a "death camp." Historian
Paul Johnson, for example, tells us in his book The History of the
Jews, that the six death camps were Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblin-
ka, Belzec, Chelmno and Sobibor. Unfortunately, when Dr. Muthig
was "confessing' he couldn't know how the Holocaust story would
later be revised in the light of incontrovertible facts.
Berben also makes some serious errors in listing death camps.
On page 292 of the book he prints a map that he says is based on
one produced by Belgium's Service of Research and Documentation
of the Ministry of Public Health and the Family. Only two of the six
"extermination camps" shown on this map are today 80 regarded by
Holocaust historians: Treblinka and Auschwitz. Berben's map cites
four "extermination camps" that no historian would today 80 desig-
nate: Soldau, Pustknow, Plaszow, and Theresienstadt. He claims
that Majdanek was just a concentration camp like Dachau, and So-
bibor is listed as an "independent camp," a term that is not defined.
Most remarkably, neither Belzec nor Chelmno- each of which is
today regarded as an "extermination camp" - even appears on Her-
ben's map. Also unexplained is why Berben cites Dr. Muthig's "con-
fession," which cites Mauthausen as a "death camp," when the map
on page 292 lists, it, not as an "extermination" camp, but as a con-
centration camp.
Another revealing fact cited by Berben is that when a Dachau
prisoner died, an autopsy was routinely performed. Until1943, Ber-
ben tells us, an autopsy was performed on the body of every prison-
er who died in the hospital or as a result of a "medical experiment."
After 1943, he goes on to relate, "post-mortems were carried out on
all prisoners who died at the sick block or elsewhere in the camp."
In the wake of the epidemic that ravaged the camp during the final
months, "they had to be satisfied with a few bodies picked at ran-
dom." (p. 109) All the same, Berben tells us, "more than ten thou-
sand autopsies were carried out under Dr. Blaha's direction." (p.
109). Where are these autopay reports today? And if the Nazis were
carrying out a program of extermination, why would they even
bother to perform autopsies? This official history does not address J
such questions. I
Finally, an observation about cremations at Dachau. cited by Ho- I

locaust historians routinely cite "eyewitness testimonies" to claim

that German camp crematories were able to incinerate bodies in a
matter of minutes. Only the Germans were able to carry out such
rapid cremations. Fortunately, Berben provides a realistic portrayal
of the cremation process at Dachau. He tells us that the camp's four
cremation ovens had a total maximum capacity of seven or eight
Dachau prisoners on liberation day. Again, compare the physical
condition of these inmates with the emaciated bodies whose
deaths are attributed to g888ing in the camp. Victims of g888ing
should include bodies in healthy condition.

22 23
bodies at any one time, and that "cremation lasted about two
hours." During the last months of the war, when disease was so
rampant, "it was no longer possible to cremate all the bodies." Even
after the Germans abandoned the camp, the prisoners' Internation-
al Committee that ran the camp continued to operate the camp cre-
matory ovens. Berben relates: ''The Kommandos had not left for
work, except those who looked after the bakery, heating and the cre-
matorium, the International Committee having made sure that
their activities would continue." (p. 188)
'Ib sum up here, Berben's fascinating official history of Dachau,
tells us that there was the camp's prisoners were able to make use
of a camp brothel, a canteen, that they had Sundays off, that there
were religious church services, free recreation time, lectures, a li-
brary, newspapers, concerts, and movies. It tells us that prisoners
received regular meals, that some received a second breakfast, that
food arrived from the Red Cross, that food parcels were sent by rel-
atives, and that prisoners could purchase food at the canteen. It
tells us that doctors and nurses worked in a modern camp hospital
to provide every possible help to prisoners, until the final months of
the war when they were overwhelmed by disease and overcrowding.
It tells us that disease was the primary cause of death in Dachau,
and that even the Allies lost thousands of prisoners to the scourge.
It tells us that there was no extermination program at Dachau, and
raises doubts about the existence of any such program in other
camps. Far from substantiating claims about "the tens of thousands
of deportees who were exterminated in the death camp," this work
proves that no such extertninations took place there. If this official
history is the most damning "exterminationist" account of Dachau,
the revisionists have won their case.
24
Part '1\vo
The Dachau ''Gas Cha1nber''?
Many once widely accepted "facts" about Dachau are now discred-
ited. It wasn't long ago, however, when it was seriously and author-
itatively claimed that people were killed in a gas chamber at
Dachau. Eyewitness testimony was cited to ''prove" that as many as
250,000 people were put to death in this gas chamber.
The Dachau gas chamber story appears to have begun as soon as
American troops liberated the camp on April 29, 1945. One of the
first sights witnessed by the liberating troops were piles of corpses
of victims of disease. A room near the crematory was filled with
waiting corpses. Nearby was the room that would be immortalized
in photographs as the Dachau gas chamber. Soldiers who liberated
the camp were told that these were the bodies of gas chamber vic-
tims. To this day many elderly fornter American Gls still swear that
they personally saw the camp "gas chamber," and victims of gas-
sings there.
For instance, during an appearance by two revisionists on a Bos-
ton television station, a fornter American soldier called in to testify
that he personally saw the "gas chamber'' at Dachau. With emotion
dripping from his voice, he described this "gas chamber" as huge.
Similarly, during an December 17, 1990, appearance by two other
revisionists (Mark Weber and Theodore J. O'Keefe) on Los Angeles
radio station KFI, a Second World War veteran who phoned in casti-
gated the revisionists as liars because, he told the audience, he had
personally seen the bodies of prisoners put to death in the Dachau
gas chamber. This caller's story was not, however, in line with ei-
ther the current or the once-held version of the Dachau "gas cham-
ber" story. He claimed to have seen a Jeep up on blocks, with a tube
running from the exhaust pipe into the Dachau gas chamber. Ac-
cording to the older (and now universally discredited) version of the
Dachau gas chamber story, gassings were supposedly carried out
there by dropping cyanide gas pellets into the lethal room, or by
pumping in cyanide gas through pipes. Possibly he did see a Jeep
up on blocks, perhaps for repairs, and very likely he did see bodies.
But this is the only account I've come across that claims that people
were killed at Dachau with exhaust from a Jeep. All the same, this
man was on the verge of weeping as he told his "eyewitness" ac-
count. For more than 40 years he has believed that what he thought
he saw is the truth, and no evidence exists that will convince him
otherwise.
25
 Former Dachau inmates have provided similarly striking "eye-
witness testimony" of gassings in the camp. One such person is
Nerin Gun. In a memoir of his internment there, this 'furkish jour-
nalist tells us that 3,166 inmates were gassed in a phony shower
room near the camp crematory, and that altogether 100,000 people
died in Dachau. 7 Gun even provides a vivid and rather detailed de-
scription of the alleged gassing process, which most readers would
presumably accept as credible:8
I belonged to the team of prisoners in charge of sorting the
pitiful berda of Hungarian Jeweeaee which were being d.irec:t-
ed to the ga.e cbambera ...
Sometimes the internees tried to persuade those women
who were carrying infante in their arms to let them take the
children from them, for it wa.e sometimes po88ible to stow ba-
bies away in the camp where devoted women would take care
of them .. . But our arguments were of no avail. It wa.e impos-
sible to tell the victims what wa.e going to happen inaide, for
they would not have believed it, or else, seized with panic,
they would have started to scream. So the motbera refuses to
give up their children, and the babies were a.ephyxiated and
burned with their mothers.
Gun goes on to describe
the horror of what went on in the "shower room." The naked
women, their sweating bodies pressed closely one against the
other, the babies suffocating in their arms. Maybe one moth-
er would have put her baby down on the floor to spare it the
first shock of the expected spray of scalding water ... then
her face contorted with the horror of seeing her baby start
coughing first, u the fumes of the ga.e iaaued from the floor,
start to vomit blood, turn blue, violet, black. crushed under
the weight of the bodies of the other victims slipping to the
floor, like melted wax.
But now suddenly, stealthily, the same horrible surprise
a.e for the women who expected a spray of bot water and in-
stead inhaled a deadly gaa .. .
In his memoir, Gun reproduces the familiar US Army photograph This US Army photo was taken at Dachau on April 30, 1946, one
of a GI standing in front of the alleged Dachau gas chamber. In day after the camp's liberation. It shows a GI standing in front of
Gun's memoir, this photo is captioned: a door marked with a skull and crossbones and the words "Cau-
tion! Gas! Life danger! Do not open!" According to the official cap-
The gas chamber. At the moment of liberation, the hour of tion, "these chambers were used for delousing clothes, as part of
the la.et operation wa.e still written on the door. Since them, the routine to curtail the apread of typhus. This chamber was
Germane have tried to deny that there wa.e a gae chamber in never used to kill people. For aeveral decades, this photo has
the camp. This photograph is proof: it was taken the day of been widely reporduced. to help keep alive the notorious Dachau
the liberation. "ga.e chamber" myth. (US Army photo SC 206194.)

27
26
 Comparing this photograph with the description he provides of
the "gassing process," the reader will notice that the door shown in
this photo looks nothing like the door to a shower room. Further-
more, this door is marked with a skull and crossbones, the interna-
tionally recognized symbol for poison, as well as a warning:
"Caution! Gas! Life Danger! Do not open!"
And yet, Gun wants his readers to believe that 3,166 people
walked through this door believing they were entering a shower
room. As a matter of fact he tells us that he and the others who
helped "sort" these alleged victims didn't warn them because they
would not have believed any warnings (even, apparently, the graph-
ic warning on the door itselO.
Gun isn't the only writer who didn't know that Dachau had been
dropped from the "official" list of death camps. In his book Deliver-
ance Day: The Last Hours at Dachau, Michael Selzer tells us that
"A small gas chamber was constructed late in 1942; and although it
certainly was put to use (despite some reports), its full capacity
seems never to have been utilized.''9
Also in his book Selzer reproduces the familiar Dachau "gas
chamber'' photo, and comments on it: "A sign in the gas chamber
identifies it as such and explains that it was never used. Your guide
repeats this. But you have done your research, and remember pho-
tographs of the doors before they got their new coat of grey. On
them -the outer side- were once stenciled a skull and crossbones
and the words Vorsicht! Gas! Lebensgefahr! Nicht offen! 'Caution!
Gas! Mortal Danger! Do not open!"'lO
What I find hard to believe is that more than 3,000 people (in
Gun's account, but up to 250,000 according to other eyewitnesses)
would actually walk through this massive air-tight door, and think
they were entering a shower. I find it impossible to believe that they
would read the writing on the outside of the door, which clearly
identifies the room as a lethal gas chamber, and still believe it was
really a shower. Gun would have us also believe that the victims
would still believe this was a shower even if they were explicitly
told it was a gas chamber: "It was impossible to tell the victims
what was going to happen inside, for they would not have believed
it ..." Gun's account, like the accounts of other "eyewitnesses," is an
insult to the intelligence of the people allegedly exterminated.
The US Army's Dachau "gas chamber'' photo is one of the most fa-
miliar photographs cited as evidence of homicidal gassings in Ger-
man wartime camps. During the period immediately following the
end of the war, it was official Allied policy that Dachau was an ex-
termination camp. At the famous Nuremberg "war crimes" trial of
1945-46, German defendants were charged (and found guilty) of
•
28
gassing thousands of victims there. In volume 19 of the Nuremberg
transcripts, you can read the words of Sir Hartley Shawcross, Brit-
ain's chief prosecutor in the proceeding, who rather dramatically
stated:ll
Twelve million murders! Two-thirds of the Jews in Europe
exterminated, more than six million of them on the killers'
own figures. Murder conducted like some mass production
industry in the gas chambers and the ovens of Auschwitz,
Dachau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Majdanek,
and Oranienburg.
(Notice that Shawcross included Dachau, Mauthausen and
Oranienburg, camps that no historian today believes were extermi-
nation camps.)
Moreover, the American prosecutor presented to the Nuremberg
Tribunal a US Congressional report, labeled document L-159, that
purported to explain how gassings were conducted at Dachau. Ac-
cording to this report: 12
A distinguishing feature of the Dachau Camp was the gas
chamber for the execution of prisoners and the somewhat
elaborate facilities for execution by shooting.
The gas chamber was located in the center of a large room
in the crematory building. It was built of concrete. Its dimen-
sions were about 20 feet by 20 feet, and the ceiling was some
10 feet in height! In two opposite walls of the chamber were
air tight doors through which condemned prisoners could be
taken into the chamber for execution and removed after exe-
cution. The supply of gas into the chamber was controlled by
means of two valves on one of the outer walls, and beneath
the valves was a small glass-covered peephole through which
the operator could watch the victims die. The gas was let into
the chamber through pipes terminating in perforated brass
fixtures set into the ceiling. The chamber was of size suffi-
cient to execute probably a hundred men at one time.
The room in which the gas chamber stood was flanked on
both ends by warerooms in which the bodies were placed af-
ter execution to await cremation. The size of each room was
approximately 30 by 50 feet. At the time we visited the camp
these warerooms were piled high with dead bodies. In one of
the rooms the bodies were thrown in an irregular heap. In
the other room they were neatly stacked like cordwood. The
irregular pile of bodies was perhaps 10 feet high, covering
most of the floor space. All of them were naked.
The description provided here does not correspond with the testi-
mony of either of the American veterans who challenged the revi-
29
sionists. The first, it will be recalled, claimed that the "gas
chamber" room was "huge"; according to the Congressional report it
is only 20 by 20 feet. When you review the veteran's call to the Bos-
ton television station it seems that he is describing a room much
larger than this. The other veteran claimed the apparatus was an
automobile with a tube running from the exhaust pipe. The docu-
ment filed with the Military Tribunal by the US government doesn't
even come close to this description.
Allied officials also presented to the Nuremberg Tribunal an "eye-
witness," Dr. Franz Blaha, who allegedly helped with the gassing
executions. Blaha testified:lS
Many executions by gaa or shooting or injections took place
right in the [Dachau] camp. The gaa chamber waa completed
in 1944, and I waa called by Dr. Raacher to examine the fint
victims. Of the eight or nine persons in the chamber there
were three still alive, and the remainder appeared to be
dead. Their eyes were red, and their faces were swollen.
Many prisoners were later killed in this way.
(Notice that whereas Blaha claims the gas chamber wasn't built
until 1944, Michael Selzer, quoted earlier, claims the lethal cham-
ber was built in 1942.)
In his testimony to the Nuremberg trial, Blaha also claimed that,
in addition to gassings, Dachau prisoners were also killed with in-
jections of poison. But forensic evidence collected at the scene by
American medical authorities actually proves this did not happen.
Dr. Charles P. Larson was assigned by US military authorities to
carry out thousands of autopsies at Dachau. He later recalled:l-'
I was the only forensic pathologist on duty in the entire Eu-
ropean Theater - which ie why I waa detailed ultimately to
conduct the autopsies at Dachau. So whether the authorities
liked what I did or not, they were stuck with the only top-
qualified man in my field and they had to take me!
Dr. Larson filed a report on the accusations of poisoning by injec-
tion. He wrote:15
.. . According to reliable testimony, these individuals were
murdered by the hypodermic i.I:Uection of an unknown poison
a matter of hours before the Americans liberated the camp.
The German doctor for the camp - a "Dr. Blanke" - was
seen to have used a large syringe with a needle and to have
il\jected this unknown poison into these individuals. The re-
Bodies of German troop• lying at the bue of a Dachau guard
sult of the irijection was death in from five to 20 minutes.
tower. These men were llhot down by American eoldien after they
Death was proceeded by generalized convulsions. In a search
had 8UI'I'endered.
of the camp and of "Dr. Blanke's" home and office, no clue ..
31
30
 was fund as to the type of poison used. From some autopsies
performed, the brain, portions of the liver, the spleen, the
heart and one kidney were retained for transmission to the
First Medical Laboratory in Paris for toxicological examina-
tion to determine the type of poison administered.
According to Larson's biographer, "Major Larson later received
reports from the FML in Paris that the organs he had sent in for
toxicological examination on three autopsied cases were negative
for all poisons." On this issue, Dr. Larson's report noted: 'The testi-
mony suggested that some of those poisoned received the injection
into the chest over the heart. No needle wounds were observed on
the heart in the cases autopsied." Larson's biographer goes on to tell
us that the only forensic pathologist investigating the alleged exter-
minations in the European concentration camps never did find one
single case of death by poison or by poison gas. He writes:16
In one grave the bulldozers uncovered an estimated 2,000
bodies, many of which were subjected to autopsy examina-
tion by Ml\ior Larson. All of those autopsied had died of vari-
ous conditions such as emaciation with starvation,
tuberculosis, typhus or other infectious diseases.
For the next ten days, many nights with only an hour or
two or restless sleep, Col. Larson worked among the dead.
He performed about 25 autopsies a day and superficially ex-
amined another 300 to 1,000 bodies. He autopsied only those
bodies that appeared to have died questionably. "Many of
them died of typhus," Dr. Larson told me recently.
At Dachau Col. Larson's work - the profile of the prison-
er population that his autopsies projected - indicated that
only a small percentage of the deaths were due to medical ex-
perimentation on humans. It indicated that most of the vic-
tims died from so-called "natural causes" at the time; that is,
of disease brought on by malnutrition and filth which are the
handmaidens of war.
In spite of the fact that thousands of autopsies were performed
under the auspices of the US military proving that no one was ex-
terminated by any type of poison, "eyewitness" accounts of such
killings continue to flourish. For years after the war ended, Dr. Lar-
son himself remained silent on this issue, and only rarely spoken
about his forensic investigations. In 1980, while he was being hon-
ored by the University of Kansas, he explained why in a newspaper
interview. "Larson has talked little publicly about the war experi-
ence," a journalist noted in his article about the physician's work at
Dachau. "One reason for his silence has been that his autopsy find-
ings conflicted with the widely held belief that most Jews in Nazi
32
camps were exterminated by gassing, shooting or poisoning." Lar-
son himself explained: "What we've heard is that six million Jews
were exterminated. Part of that is a hoax." The article went on to
tell readers:17
Larson said in an interview Monday that certainly hundred.e
of thousands, even millions, of Jews died at the hands of the
Nazis. But most died as a result of the conditions to which
they were subjected rather than mass exterminations.
"They worked these people to death," he [Larson] said.
Fed on potato peelings, inadequately clothed and packed into
shacks, they died of every known disease, he said. "'n one
camp, 90 per cent died of tuberculosis. It went from shack to
shack."
Other eyewitness reports also exaggerate deaths at Dachau and
invent stories of gas chambers. Pastor Martin Niemoller, the well-
known anti-Nazi German Protestant church leader, claimed in 1946
that 238,756 persons had been exterminated in the mythical gas
chambers of Dachau.l8
Father Alexia Lechanski, one of the many Polish priests who had
been held in Dachau during the war, made similar claims about the
camp in an article published in 1989 in a conservative Catholic
weekly:19
During the ten [actually twelve] years of its existence,
Dachau was a veritable factory of death and became an im-
mense tomb for 278,000 men, women and children. In this
number more than 50,000 Poles and about 800 Polish priests
were included ...
Above a heavy door there was an inscription in the Ger-
man language, Brausebad (shower bath). A sense of stupe-
faction filled your mind as you grasped the significance of
that inscription. The victims to be gassed were previously
told they were going to take a bath. Each would be given a
towel and a small piece of soap. They would be ushered un-
dressed into the gas chamber that really produced the im-
pression of a bathroom. The condemned prisoners were
deceived particularly by small false sieves or gratings fixed
up in the ceilings. The cement floor had large holes covered
with an iron grate. it could easily have been taken as the
means of draining off the water. In the wall on the left side a
small glass peephole was set up for watching the effects of
the gas and the reactions of dying victims. It was such a tiny
and harmless-looking thing.
When the room was filled with prisoners, the door was
shut and the faucet at the end of the pipe for conducting gas
from the outside was opened to bring a violent and dreadful
33
 end to all thoee unfortunate people. The gas came up from
underneath the cement ftoor through the hole in the middle.
Death followed almoet in a ftaah, in three to ftve minutee'
time. Then a apecial aquad of priaonen had to clear away the
warm, aometimea not quite dead, bodiea of their camp fel-
I adequate; they eometimee received up to a third of a loaf of
lows. The corpses afforded a horrible eight. Their faces would
be distorted. Their eyes dim, glaeey, wide open, and full of
dread and would be etubbomly looking at aome far-off dis-
tance a11 though sending their la~~t thoughts to their ehildren
and all they loved; a11 though entreating Heaven above for re-
venge for their lives ao cruelly tramped out.
Here is yet another "eyewitness" who has embellished his story,
this time to appeal to a Catholic readership. In this account, the vic-
tims die "entreating Heaven above," and "sending their last
thoughts to their children." Incredibly, Father Lechanski suggests
that the Dachau gas chamber death toll was 278,000. Eyewitness
Nerin Gun would only hazard a claim of 100,000 Dachau deaths, of
whom, he wrote, about 3,000 died in the gas chamber. By contrast,
the official organization of Dachau survivors now puts the total
Dachau death toll at less than 30,000, and acknowledges that no
one died in a gas chamber.
Another Polish Priest who was interned in Dachau during the
war has provided a similarly imaginative account of life in the
camp. As Father Bonislaw Szymanski related in a 1985 article: "His
captors taught him and many of his fellow priests how to lay bricks,
and forced them to construct buildings that would be useful to the
camp: a crematorium, a gas chamber.''20
Although Fr. Szymanski claimed to have worked on constructing
the camp "gas chamber" building, Berben's official history of
Dachau shows that this is not possible: all priests had been with-
drawn from work details by the time this building was built. The
earliest that any "eyewitness'' claims that the "gas chamber" build-
ing was constructed is 1942. (Others claim 1944.) However, the
priests were "free from work" as of March 15, 1941.
According to Berben's official history of Dachau:21
On March 15, 1941, the clergy were withdrawn from work
Kommandoa on orden from Berlin, and their conditione im-
proved. They were supplied with bedding of the kind issued
to the SS, and Russian and Polish priaonen were assigned to
look after their quarters. They could get up an hour later
than the other priaonen and reat on their beda for two houn
in the morning and afternoon. Free from work, they could
given themselves to study and to meditation. They were giv-
en newspapen and allowed to uae the library. Their food wa11
34
bread a day; there Wall even a period when they were given
half a litre of cocoa in the morning and a third of bottle of
wine daily... Sometimee two or three daya' ratione were is-
sued together and the priesta had to drink it at one aitting,
which caused aome of them to feel rather cheerful.
Szymanski also exaggerated in claiming that: "Eventually, some
prisoners were allowed to receive packages from their families.
Some of the Polish priests found altar breads and small containers
of wine tucked into their parcels. 'We celebrated Mass there, secret-
ly, in Dachau,' said Father Szymanski. It was like the early Chris-
tians in the catacombs.''22
Such fanciful tales of secret masses similar to early Christians
does not correspond with the current official history of Dachau. AB
Berben relates, the Catholic priests there not only enjoyed preferen-
tial treatment (with Polish and Russian servants), but were permit-
ted to openly celebrate Mass in a chapel that had been built for
their use. According to Berben, this chapel could "hold about 800
people, but often more than a thousand crowded in." Berben de-
scribes in detail the decor of the chapel, which had eight windows
and a floor that was "carefully polished" with a "good-quality floor
polish." Berben's account continues (p. 153):
The high altar was on a platform six feet square; the taber-
nacle, decorated at first with metal from food-tins, had been
replaced at Easter 1944 by another one, made of artistically
carved pear-wood, behind which a cruci.fi.x four feet high, pre-
sented by a Munster congregation and flanked on all eidee by
three candelabra. On the right the credence table served as
an extra altar, and on the left there was a harmonium pro-
vided by the Dean of Dachau. A &ne statue of the V1rgin had
been sent by the head of the Salvatoriane in Freudenthal in
the diocese of Branitz, at Easter 1943.
While Berben's description continues in this vein, this is suffi-
cient to make the point here about Fr. Szymanski's "eyewitness tes-
timony."
In an undated document entitled "Father Bruno's World War II
Recollections," which appears to be the basis for the 1985 article
about Fr. Szyma.nski's experiences, a priest recounts: "Whoever was
unable to work, for whatever reason, had to die, and die they did ...
in gas chambers. In 1942 alone about 300 Polish priests were
gassed."
These priests seem to have been rather inventive in their old age.
Contradicting accepted facts about Dachau, their stories predict-
ably have nothing to back them up.
35
 Interestingly, the same Catholic weekly that published Fr. Szy-
manski's fanciful account was also one of the first periodicals any-
where to expose the Dachau gas chamber story as a myth. In a 1959
issue of Our Sunday Visitor, a letter by reader Stephen Pinter ap-
peared in which he responded to a previous article about Dachau.2S
I
In addition, false statements appear in the Pritc:hett article,
euch aa the reference to gaa chamben at camp Daehau. I waa
in Daehau for 17 months after the war, aa a U.S. War Depart-
ment Attorney, and can state that there waa no gaa chamber
at Daehau. What waa shown to vieiton and sighteeere there
and erroneously deeeribed aa a gaa chamber, waa a cremato-
ry. Nor waa there a gaa chamber in any of the other eoncen-
tration campe in Germany. We were told that there waa a gaa
chamber at Aueehwitz, but since that was in the Russian
zone of occupation, we were not permitted to investigate,
since the Ru1111ians would not permit it.
According to a special issue of the British military history period-
ical, After the Battle (which was largely devoted to Dachau), the US
Army mis-labeled the famous photo of the camp's "gas chamber':24
Although this picture, taken on April 30 by T/4 Sidney Blau,
is captioned aa the gaa chambers being examined by the Sev-
enth Army soldier, they are in fact the decontamination
rooms for the clothing removed from the dead located at the
extreme weetern end of the cremation building. American soldiera who liberated Dachau eummarily killed 520 of
the 560 German camp penonnel who had 8\UTendered. Here, sol-
According to After the Battle, these "oven-like chambers were diera of the !57th Regiment, 45th Divblon, have juet machlne-
used to disinfect the clothing, which had been removed from the 1\lD.Ded a group of about a hundred German prt.onera. Four who
were mlued are atW •tanding; they were killed moments after
corpses, so that it could be safely returned to the clothing depot in tht. photo was taken. No one wu ever punJ.med for tht. atrocity.
the administrative block for re-issue." What this means is that one (US Army photo SC208766.) •
of the two rooms claimed by eyewitness to have been the gas cham-
ber where prisoners were executed was actually a facility that used Dachau has been officially exorcised of the gas chamber demon. Si-
cyanide gas to kill typhus-spreading lice in the clothing of dead mon Wiesenthal, the famed hunter of alleged ex-Nazis wrote in a
prisoners. That is, this gas chamber was used to save lives. letter published in 1975: "Because there were no ext~rmination
After the Battle does suggest that a homicidal gas chamber was camps o? Ge~an soil the Neo-Nazis are using this as proof that
built in Dachau: "The official literature on sale in the museum shop these crtmes dtd not happen and furthermore exhibit witnesses
states that the gas chamber was never used for its intended role but from German Labour-Camps who have never seen mass-extermina-
only as a shower room." This claim is almost amusing. Eyewitness tion."25
after eyewitness repeats gripping, mournful tales of innocent pris- One of the most prominent Holocaust historians, Dr. Martin
oners stepping in to take a shower, only to find poison gas pouring Bro~zat of ~rmany's ~restigious Institute of Contemporary Histo-
out of the showerheads. Now the "official literature" tells us that ry (m Mumch), stated m a letter published in 1960 in the German
the opposite was really true. Instead of stepping into a shower room weekly Die Zeit:26
to be gassed, we are now told they stepped into a gas chamber only Neither in Dachau nor in Bergen-Bel.een nor in Buchenwald
to be showered! · were Jews or other prisoners gassed. The gaa chamber in
In spite of the eyewitness accounts we have recounted here, Dachau waa never entirely finished or put "into operation."
Hundreds of thousands of prisoners who perished in Dachau
36
37
 and other concentration campe in the Old Reich [that il, Qer..
many in ita borders of 1937) were victims, above all, of cata-
strophic hygienic and provisioning conditions: according to
official SS statistica, during the twelve month• from July
1942 thl'ough June 1948 alone, 110,812 penona died of dil-
l I_Mleral pub~e. The fi_nt time one specific atrocity came to my atten-
eaae and hunger in all of the concentration campe of the Re-
ich.
No reputable historian still contends that anyone was ever killed
in a Dachau "gas chamber." Today the only remaining dispute on
this issue is between those who contend that no homicidal eae
chamber ever existed in the camp, and those who argue that there
was a homicidal gas chamber in Dachau, but it was never actually
used to kill anyone.
One would think that all of this evidence would induce the "exter-
minationists" to admit that the "revisionists" were right all along.
But that doesn't seem to be the case. Most of them simply ignore the
revisionists, and refuse to discuss the issue with them or to publicly
debate them. This in spite of the fact that the revisionist case keeps
getting stronger with each new bit of evidence, and the extermina-
tionist case gets ever weaker. When a person named Shihadeh
pointed out in a letter to the Penn State College student paper that
the exterminationist case keeps changing, a dean of the school,
Brian Winston, responded (April17, 1989) with a blistering attack:
I'm afraid that the only thing that had been changed il the
nature of Shihadeh's ignorance. The diltinction between the
concentration camps, auch aa Dachau, and the death campe,
such aa Sobibor, is now understood even by the dimmest
among us, it would seem. However, nowhere in the Holocau.t
literature that I know i3 there any claim that there were gaa
chambers at Dachau. In my research I have never encoun-
tered any eyewitneu to it.Thia, in the end, il the poeition to
which orthodox believers in the Holocaust story are having
to resort. In spite of many "eyewitneu" aecounte deec:ribing
Dachau "gas chambers," they now assert that no auch ac-
counts ever existed! In effect, they now concede that the Re-
visionists were absolutely right all along, but they
adamantly refuse to give Reviaioniata any credit for thia. In-
stead they prefer to pretend that the Revisionist position,
which haa been proven, was really their poeition all along.
This is not to say, of course, that atrocities were not committed at
Dachau. Some such atrocities have already been covered in the first
section of this booklet. However, other Dachau atrocities have gen-
erally been ignored by historians, and are totally unknown to the
38
taon waa whlle reading a newspaper article by a friend who had
helped liberate Dachau. In that account he brieft.y mentioned how
the American troope had lined up and illegally executed the Ger-
man troope who had surrendered the camp. I waa shocked to learn
this, and it was this shock that helped stimulate my interest in the
truth about Dachau. Having never known that this friend had been
in Dachau.' I called him and asked him to recount the story. When
he was ~shed I lwd o~e question: Did he see any evidence of a gas
chamber m Dachau? His answer was a firm No. Since then and 88 I
further investigated the history of the Dachau camp, I ~ve come
across other accounts verifying what my friend told me.
One Dachau prisoner recounted the same story:27
I aacertain that the Americana are now master of the •itua-
tion. I go toward the officer who haa come down from the
~ ~trod~ce myself ~d ~e embracea me. He il a mejor.
Hie uniform w dusty, hil shirt, open almost to the navel ie
:m.
filthy, eoaked with aweat, hil helmet ia on crooked, he ia
shaven and hil cigarette dangles from the left corner of hil
lip.
At this point, the young Teutonic lieutenant, Heinrich
Skocbenaky, emerges from the guard poet and comes to at-
tention before the American officer. The German is blond
handaome, perfumed, hil boota glietening, hil uniform wen:
tailored. He reports, aa if he were on the military parade
grounds near the Under den Linden c:luriD4f an exercile, then
very properly raising hil arm be ealutee with a very reepect-
ful "Hell Hitler!" and clicb hil heels.
"I hereby turn over to you the concentration camp of
Dachau, 30,000 reaidenta, 2,840 sick, 27,000 on the outaide,
660 garrieon troops. •
Am I dreaming? It seems that I can see before me the
striking contrast of a beast and a god. Only that theBoche ia
the one who looks divine.
The American m.Vor does not return the ealute. He heei-
tatee for a moment, as it he were trying to make sure that hie
il remembering the adequate worda. Then, he apita into the
face of the German.
"Du Schweinhundl"
And then, "Sit down there!"- pointing to the rear aeat of
one of the jeeps which in the meantime have driven in.
The m.Vor turns to me and hands me an automatic rifle.
"Come with me."
But I no longer had the atrength to move.
"No, I stay here-"
The m .Vor gave an order, the jeep with the young German
39

officer in it went outaide the camp again. A few minute. went
by, my comradee bad not yet dared to come out of their bar·
ra::u for at that diatance they could not tell the outcome of
the n~gotiationa between the American officer and the SS
men. Then I bear MVeral abota.
Wfbe butard i.l dead" the American ~or NYS to me.
Berben's official history gives short shri~ to the fate of,Ge.rman
troops. He does mention that on the mornmg of the camps hber~­
tion "white flags had replaced the swastika o~ all the. flagpoles m
the camp, though the guard towers were.. stlll occup1ed and ma·
chine-guns were still trained on the blocks. (p. 191) Other accounts
also make it clear that the German troops had surrendered; they
were not killed in battle but were executed while prisoners of war.
Germans were put on trial and executed for similar acts, but, then,
the victors were the prosecutors, judges and executioners, and they
write the official history.
After the Battle recounts another Allied massacre at D~chau. In
this case the German guards in the camp towers were commg down,
hands raised in the international symbol of surrender:28
The SS men promptly came down the ladder, their bands
reaching high. But now the American GI aaw red. He shot
the Germans down with a telling blast and to make doubly
sure aent a final shot into their fallen bodiee. Then the hunt
started for any other Germans in SS uniform. "With~ a
quarter of an hour," wrote [Nerin~ Gun? "t~ere was no! a sm-
gle one of the Hitler henchmen alive w1thin the camp.
Selzer (p. 176) also confirms this atrocity: " ... Surr.ender or no,
the Nazis were pulverized by fire from a score of r1fles ~s they
stepped out. Climbing over their corpses, the Gis rushed mto the
towers. More shots were heard."
Selzer recounts (pp. 188-189) a third incident of murder of sur-
rendered German troops.
"Kill 'em!" someone echoed. "Kill 'em! Kill 'em!" Others ~k
up the cry until it seemed that the whole squad was chantmg
the same refrain: "Kill 'em!"
Screaming the words now, hi.l body eonvulaed with aobs,
Smitty let off a bunt of fire from his machine gun. Noiaeleaa-
ly, ten or twelve N azia alipped to the ground, de~d. The spec-
tacle did not propitiate any of the men. W1thou~ e;en
pausing, they continued to scream. "More,. more! Kill e~
all!" they yelled. Again Smitty pulled the trigger, and agam
Nazis fell to the ground- this time about thirty of them.
Skodzensky was in thia batch. But his death did not .appease
the Gle, either. Smitty took hia time. The seconds t1cked by
40
until the luapen.H became unbearable. Apin he opened &re,
in a long raking action that felled thirty, forty, 8fty, and Anal-
ly nearly eight,. Nuia. Now only three remained .tanding,
miraculously \llUICathed by the spray of lead. Two had their
hands dutifull;y in the air, u they bad been ordered. while a
third, whether out of defiance or deepair, eroued hi.l arms in
front of him and awaited bia fate. Smitty, however, noticing
that aome of the men on the ground were wounded rather
than dead, temporarily ignored the three atill on their feet
and direeted the gun at the pile ofbodiea on the ground. They
soon stopped twitching. Now be turned bia attention to the
three survivors.
... But there were no more to kill. One-hundred and twen-
ty-two N azie lay dead in a neat row along the base of the
wall.
I should, in fairness, mention here my suspicions about the valid-
ity of these first person accounts. While I do think that theae inci-
dents did happen, I am skeptical of these "first person" descriptions.
It has always amazed me that those individuals who provide first
person Holocaust accounts always happen to be right where the ac-
tion is. Selzer does not write as if he actually witnessed anything
himself; his accounts are actually based on stories he was told. He
even admits (p. 13) that his account of Dachau is somewhat fiction-
alized:
I have eonflated a number of accounta given to me. That ia to
aay, while much of an individual's story, as told in this book.
belongs to the (pseudonymous) person in connection with
whom it ia told, there are in almoat every instance additional
epi.aodee, experieneee, and ineighta that do not belong to that
individual but to another, who makes no independent ap-
pearance in this book ... even where hie friend [of various
characters in the book] may lmow the real identity of [any
character] .. . they should not assume that every aspect de-
picted pertains to the real-life person.
In particular, Selzer's description of the Dachau massacre of Ger-
man prisoners seems to be nothing more than a fictionalized ac-
count based on the photograph reproduced in this booklet. However,
if you look closely at the photo you will see, at the far right, a fourth
man who appears to be standing against the wall, and maybe an-
other German guard who survived the initial executions. It appears
Mr. Selzer didn't notice him.
Berben does not actually mention this massacre, perhaps because
he does not wish to acknowledge any Allied war crimes. Instead, he
manufactures an incident to justify the killings: " ... Gunshots were
41
heard near the camp and the violence of the aploeione made the
hut walls shake. Soon, however, the noise abated. It waa later
learned that it wu an attack on the camp by the SS Vlkina Divi-
sion, which had fortunately been repulled by the Americana." (p.
194) By coincidence it waa troops of the SS VIking Diviaion who
were killed in this maaaacre.
There are some important qualitative difference• between the
eyewitneBB testimony of the Dachau masaacre of German prisoners,
and the "eyewitneBB testimony" of execution g&BBinp at the camp.
In the case of the massacre, testimony ie provided by individuals
who have no motive to exaaprate or invent what really happened.
By contrast, nearly all Holocaust "gassing" testimony comes not
from the alleged perpetrators, but from the. alleged victims, who
certainly did have a motive to exaggerate and invent. In the case of
the Dachau ma888cre, we have testimony from American soldiers 88
well 88 from prisoners who hated the Germans. Another ditference
is that whereas in the ease of the massacre, we know that the
American troops 88 a matter of course had in their posseBBion the
weapons employed in the killings, while there is no documentary or
forensic evidence that the Germans had or used homicidal "gas
chambers." In the case of the ma888Cre, all the eyewitnesaes agree
on the fundamentals. There is no disagreement about who was
killed and who carried out the killings, or when and where the kill-
ings took place. This is not true in the case of "testimony" about
"gas chamber" killings.
And there is another critical difference: in the case of the ma888-
cre, photographic evidence exists proving beyond any doubt that the
killings actually took place. In the photo reproduced in this booklet,
the victims can be seen lying on the ground in front of the wall. Also
visible are four prisoners who are still standing, awaiting the next
lethal volley. The photo also shows the American troops, and a GI
kneeling in front of the machine gun that was used to kill the pris-
oners.
'lbgether in this single photograph, we see the victims, the instru-
ment of killing, and the perpetrators. In the case of the alleged "gas
chambers," NO comparable photo exists.
Another important fact about this ma888cre should be noted. Of
all the atrocities committed at Dachau (by either the Germans or
the Allies) the liberation day massacre of German prisoners was
probably the worst. According to Selzer, 122 Germans were sum-
marily killed at Dachau on liberation day (although it is not clear if
he includes in this figure the guards murdered at the towers). The
greatest single atrocity death toll at Dachau prior to this, according
to Berben, was the execution of 90 Soviet military officers on Sep-
42
tember 4, 1944.
After the war Dachau was the site of the American-run war
crimes trials at which German soldiers were tried for murdering
American prisoners of war in what is known as the Malmedy inci-
dent.29 The defendants in the Dachau ''Malmedy" trial were found
guilty, and 43 were sentenced to death. But unlike the murders
committed by the American troops at Dachau, the Malmedy inci-
dent was not a clear-cut atrocity. As American historian Alfred de
Zayas has noted, "the killings were so closely related to the fighting
that the case for deliberate murder was rendered somewhat tenu-
ous.'>30 (As it happens, this incident had already been investigated
by German authorities during the war.)
The case against the Germans in the Malmedy case was so weak
that General Thomas T. Handy, Commander-in-Chief of the Ameri-
can armed forces in Germany, commuted the death sentences to life
imprisonment. As de Zayas notes (p. 120): " ... General Handy ex-
plained his decision on January 31, 1951, by conceding mitigating
circumstances, since the killings had 'occurred in connection' with
confused, volatile and desperate fighting.'' By contrast, the Dachau
massacre of German prisoners had not occurred "in connection with
confused, volatile and desperate fighting"; it was simply a clear cut
illegal atrocity. It has also been admitted that during the trial th~
''Malmedy" defendants were mistreated ''at the hands of the Ameri-
can guards.''81 German defendants in other postwar trials were
similarly mistreated to "persuade" them to confess to various
crimes.32
Another Dachau "incident" that is almost entirely unknown to
the general public (and which Berben fails to mention) occurred on
January 19, 1946. Historian Nikolai 'lblstoy writes about this atroc-
ity in his book, The Secret Betrayal, which tells the story of a secret
deal worked out between Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and US and
British leaders at the February 1945 Yalta conference. Under this
arrangement, three million men, women and children who had
been, at one time or other, citizens of the Soviet Union, were forcibly
rounded up and deported to the Soviet Union, where they faced exe-
cution or imprisonment. This program, known as "Operation Keel-
haul," included women and children as well as many individuals
who had left Russia before the Communist takeover of the country
in 1917. Dachau comes into play because it served as a prison camp
for nearly 400 Russians who had fought against the Soviets on the
Axis side. Tolstoy describes what happened:33
In was from amongst these [Russians who were imprisoned
after the war at Dachau) that the Americans decided to se-
43
 lect the first batch for repatriation under the new McNarney-
Clark directive. Rumours of what was impending spread
amongst the Russians, and when they were paraded for en-
trainment on January 17 [1946) they adamantly refused to
enter the trucks. American troops threatened them with fire-
arms, upon which they begged to be shot on the spot - any-
thing rather than deliverance into the hands of the NKVD
[Soviet secret police). Baftled, the guards returned them to
their barracks.
It was realised that the only way to effect the operation
would be by means of a massive deployment of force. Two
days later a shock force of 500 American and Poli~h. guards
arrived outside the camp. What followed was v1v1dly de-
acribed in a report submitted to Robert Murphy:
Conforming to agreements with the Soviets, an attempt
was made to entrain 399 former Russian soldiers wh<? had
been captured in German uniform, for the assembly center at
Dachau on Saturday, January 19.
All of these men refused to entrain. They begged to be
shot. They resisted entrainment by taking off their clothing
and refusing to leave their quarters. It was necessary to use
tear-gas and some force to drive them out. Tear-gas forced
them out of the building into the snow where those who had
cut and stabbed themselves fell exhausted and bleeding into
the snow. Nine men hanged themselves and one bad stabbed
himself to death and one other who had stabbed himself sub-
sequently died; while 20 others are still in the hospital from
self-inflicted wounds. The entrainment was finally effected of
368 men who were sent ofT accompanied by a [Soviet) Rus-
sian liaison officer on a train carrying American guards. Six
men escaped en route. A number of men ~ t~e gro~p cl~ed
they were not Russians. This, after prelimmary mvestlga-
tions by the local military authorities, was brought to the .at-
tention of the Ru~tsian liaison officer, as a result of wh1ch
eleven men were returned by the Russians as not of Soviet
nationality.
The irony of this tear-gassing incident should not be ignored b.e-
cause it is the only "gassing" of any kind ever to take place m
Dachau - and it was done by Americans.
Tolstoy goes on to note:
Protests from distinguished non-Americans were also
aroused by press accounts of the Dachau incide~t. The ~an
whose armies bad very nearly destroyed Bolshevl&m at birth,
General Denikin, addressed a moving appeal to his ~ellow­
soldier, Eisenhower. Three weeks later, Pope Pius XII 1ssued
a strong condemnation of the (a till) eecret agreement made
44
at Yalta, proteeting against the "repatriation of men againet
their will and the refueal of the right of asylum."
In all likelihood, every one of these 351 men taken by force from
Dachau was later put to death by the Soviets. That is, this Ameri-
can action most likely contributed directly to their deaths.
While these executions did not actually take place at Dachau, the
circumstances of this incident rightfully makes it part of the
Dachau story. The death toll of this atrocity supersedes that of the
liberation day killings of German prisoners. Thus, the single worst
Dachau atrocity was carried out by the Soviets with American com-
plicity, and the second worst was carried out by American troops on
liberation day. Apparently the third worst atrocity was the illegal
killings of Soviet military officers by the Germans on September 4,
1944. A distant fourth, was the alleged execution of 31 Soviet offic-
ers by the Germans on February 22, 1944. I am not counting here
the deaths of 223 Dachau prisoners in a March 1944 Allied bombing
raid because there is no indication that this was done intentionally.
The story of Dachau is a fascinating one. The truth about this
camp has been illusive and distorted. Some have fictionalized it for
profits to be made through books and movies. Others have distorted
the truth for certain political ends. Some have simply believed pro-
paganda that was fed to them by the victors. Few have bothered to
actually carry out any investigation on their own. But Dachau does
teach us something important. In war there isn't simply a "good"
side and an "evil" side. While I firmly believe that there was no val-
id excuse for the establishment of Dachau, or any of the other Ger-
man camps, I cannot find evidence that Dachau was established
systematically to murder people. I have found evidence of German
efforts to make life bearable. Indeed, because the death rate for
Dachau prisoners was considerably lower than it was for others in
Europe during the war years, these German measures much have
been successful to some degree. Nor can I find Allied actions at
Dachau totally blameless; the two worst atrocities at the camp were
committed by the Allies. The lesson we must learn is that there is
no good war.
In The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau (pp. 272-273), Alfred de
Zayas expressed a view I heartily endorse:
For there are not only heroes in war but also criminals -
and as Vietnam has ebown ue, war crimee have not been
committed exclueively by one people in hietory, nor just by
one or the other party to a struggle. In every armed conflict
heinous war crimes have been committed; moat of them have
gone unpunished. Today, after countlese fratricidal wars,
45
Western thinking reeogniz;es that dying for one'• country
may be necessary but that death on the battlefield il not
sweet, nor ie it a poeitive value in itself. War ie neither glory
nor honor. It ie horror upon horror, il\iuetiee, agony, and
I
waste.

Notes

1. See the useful annotated bibliography of Dachau "gassing"

claims complied by Robert Faurisson a.n d published in The
Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1990 (Vol. 10, No. 3), pp.
296-307.
2. See The Journal of Historical Review, May..June 1993 (Vol. 13,
No. 3), pp. 9-12.
3. See the reviews by Arthur Butz and Robert Faurisson of May-
er's book in The Journal ofHistorical Review, Fall1989 (Vol. 9,
No. 3), pp. 361-379.
4. Quoted in: Andrew Mollo, "Dachau," After the Battle (London:
Plaistow Press, 1980), Issue No. 27, pp. 2-3.
5. Quoted in: Andrew Mollo, "Dachau,'' After the Battle (London:
Plaistow Press, 1980), Issue No. 27, p. 3.
6. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam (3rd edition,
Lincoln, Neb., 1990), p. xxv.; Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, The
German Expellees (New York: St. Martin's, 1993), pp. 149-150.
7. Nerin Gun, The Day of the Americans (New York: Fleet Pub-
lishing, 1966), p. 128.
8. N. Gun, The Day of the Americans, pp. 67-69.
9. Michael Selzer, Deliverance Day: The Last Hours at Dachau
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1978), p. 31.
10. M. Selzer, Deliverance Day (1978), p. 246.
11. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Mil-
itary Tribunal (IMT ''blue series"), Vol. 19, p. 434.

46 47
12. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Mil- 28. A Mollo, ''Dachau," After the Battle (1980), Issue No. 27, p. 15.
itary Tribunal (IMT "blue series"), Vol. 37, p. 621. (Document 29. For more oftqis, see: Joseph Halow, Innocent at Dachau (Insti-
159-L is a "Report of a Special Congressional Committee to the tute for Historical Review, 1992). Available, in hardcover, from
Congress of the United States, 15 May 1945 ...".) the IHR for $15.95, plus $2.50 shipping.
13. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Mil- 30. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau,
itary Tribunal (IMT "blue series"), Vol. 5, pp. 172-173. 1939-1945 (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press,
14. Quoted in: John D. McCallum, Crime Doctor (Mercer Island, 1989), p. 119.
Wash.: The Writing Works, 1978), pp. 46, 57. 31. A. Mollo, ''Dachau," After the Battle (London: 1980), Issue No.
15. Quoted in: John D. McCallum, Crime Doctor (1978), p. 57. 27, p. 20.
16. John D. McCallum, Crime Doctor (1978), pp. 57-60, 69. 32. See: Mark Weber, ''The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust"
17. Jane Floerchinger, "Concentration Camp Conditions Killed The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1992 (Vol. 12, N~.
Most Inmates, Doctor Says," The Witchita Eagle, April1, 1980, 2), pp. 187-193.
p. 40. 33. Nikolai Tolstoy, The Secret Betrayal (New York: Scribner's,
18. Paul Rassinier, The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses 1977), pp. 354 356. The British edition of this book is entitled
(Costa Mesa: IHR, 1989), pp. 230-231. Victims of Yalta.
19. Fr. Alexis Lechanski, "At Dachau," The Wanderer (St. Paul,
Minn.), October 5, 1989.
20. Robert Baldwin, ''Priest recalls horror of concentration camp,"
Our Sunday Visitor, May 26, 1985, p. 3.
21. Paul Berben, Dachau: 1933-45, The Official History, p. 147.
22. Robert Baldwin, "Priest recalls horror of concentration camp," •
Our Sunday Visitor, May 26, 1985, p. 3.
23. Letter by Stephen F. Pinter, Our Sunday Visitor, June 14,
1959, p. 15.
24. Andrew Mollo, "Dachau," After the Battle (London: Plaistow
Press, 1980), Issue No. 27, pp. 17, 25.
25. Books & Bookmen (London), April 1975, p. 5.; Similarly, in a.
letter published in Stars and Stripes (Europe), Jan. 24, 1993,
p. 4, Wiesenthal acknowledged that "there were no extermina-
tion camps on German soil."
26. "Keine Vergasung in Dachau," Die Zeit (Gert11an edition), Au-
gust 19, 1960 (and in the US edition, Aug. 26, 1960, p. 14);
Facsimile of this letter, with translation and commentary, in
The Journal of Historical Review, May-June 1993 (Vol. 13, No.
3), p. 12.
27. A. Mollo, "Dachau," After the Battle (London: 1980), Issue No.
27, p. 13; Probably the most thoughtful and detailed account of
the liberation day massacre of German camp personnel is
Dachau: The Hour of the Avenger, a memoir and investigation
by Howard Buechner. This well illustrated 175-page softcover
book is available from Thunderbird Press, 300 Cuddihy Dr.,
Metairie, LA 70005, USA. See also: The Journal of Historical
Review, May-June 1993, pp. 7, 8, and, The Journal of Histori-
cal Review, Nov.-Dec. 1993, p. 47.

48 49
 FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Introduction to Holocaust Revisionism
by Mark Weber and Ted O'Keefe.
Cogent, coherent and packed with facts, these fasci-
nating lectures by two IHR editors provide a persuasive
and easily understandable introduction to the revision-
ist view of the "Six Million" extermination story.
Here is one of the easiest ways to learn just why this
school of historical thought is rapidly winning ever
broader support in American and around the world.
Audio cassette tape. Stock NA093. $9.95, plus $1.05 for shipping.

Innocent at Dachau
by Joseph Halow
While still a teenager, American army serviceman Joe
Halow served for a year as a court reporter at the
Dachau war crimes trial of defeated Nazis.
There he witnessed, recorded and transcribed some of
the most gripping testimony from some of the most sen-
sational of the Allied-run postwar trials: of SS guards
from Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Dora-Nordhausen;
of the inmates who carried out their orders as kapos
(prisoner trusties); and of German villagers who at-
tacked and killed downed American fliers in the final
phase of the Allies' terrifying air war.
Armed with an ironclad faith in American righteous-
ness when he arrived, young Halow soon saw the flaws
and abuses in the trials: reliance on ex post facto law
and broad conspiracy theories; abuse of prisoners during
interrogation; and the shocking tolerance, even encour-
agement, of peijured testimony by camp survivors.
Outspoken, informative, moving, Innocent at Dachau
is a unique testimony to one American's quest for truth,
understanding and honor in a realm ruled even today by
shibboleth and taboo.
Hardcover. 337 pages. Photos. Index. $15.95, plus $2.50 for ship-
ping.
ORDER FROM: Institute for Historical Review, P.O. Box 2739,
Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA
Dachau:
R eality and Myth
American troops who liberated the infamous
Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945,
were horrified by the corpses of prisoners they
found there. The Gis readily believed stories of
mass killings in a Dachau "gas chamber."
As John Cobden explains in this easily readable
overview, the real story of the Dachau camp is
quite different than the widely accepted legend.
Few know, for example, that even after the
American takeover of the camp, prisoners contin-
ued to die in large numbers. Nearly ten percent of
all deaths at Dachau took place after liberation.
Over the years, former Dachau prisoners have
told "eyewitness, stories of terrible atrocities
committed in the camp, including "gas chamber"
killings of thousands of prisoners. As this booklet
conclusively shows, however, these tales disinte-
grate upon close examination.
Cutting through a fog of confusion, deception
and politics, this succinct booklet tells the true
story of one of the best-known Third Reich
camps, showing how the "official" history of
Hitler's first concentration camp has changed
dramatically over the years.
Written with passionate devotion to truth and
humane sensitivity for the suffering of the camp's
victims, this booklet concisely and systematically
debunks a major historical legend.
Institute for Historical Review
ISBN: 0-939484-49-8